Now that you have seen “The Social Dilemma”, what’s next ? Part 1
Have you recently seen “The Social Dilemma”? Or have you been disturbed by reports of election manipulation? Or are you wary of companies manipulating your behaviour for their own profits ? This might lead you to think about what you can do to reduce the negative impact social media has on your life and want more control of your life. I will detail my thoughts and progress in this journey through this blog. Hopefully this helps others in their journey.
Before getting started, this is my privilege disclaimer and this is a shorter post of just the todos if you want to get straight to doing stuff minus the whys.
My Journey
About 4 years ago I used to consume videos and articles on Facebook and YouTube typically upwards of 3–4 hours a day. I went from counting likes on my posts every 15 min to always thinking of how my next experience could be turned into better content. Most of the people who I followed or who liked my videos, I had not met or had any direct contact with in 5+ years. At a point I recognised that this is a trap where I am now changing my life to suit social media and that can be dangerous. So one day I decided that I am not gonna use social media from now on. Well… that notion and my willpower only lasted a few hours. Clearly that is not a successful way to do this. But through ups and downs and non linear progress, I have managed to delete my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts entirely. I’m working to reduce usage of YouTube and other google products.
So here are the things I learnt and my opinions on how to de-addict.
Acknowledging the Problem and its scale
I think we should first acknowledge that social media usage is an addiction behind which billions of dollars, trained behavioral psychologists and tremendous computational resources are at work. They are trying to induce us into habits which take away self-control and make us believe things we normally wouldn’t have.
However breaking habits is hard because it requires self control and that is a finite quantity per day and is not the same everyday. Consider the following research noted by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”
A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort — cognitive, emotional, or physical — draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Their experiments involve successive rather than simultaneous tasks. Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion …
People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. But of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people…
Work stress, insufficient sleep, hunger or other factors will result in us having lesser self-control. This means that even after deciding to not use social media, you will still go back to it. It is okay, It is not your fault.
So instead of looking at it in the binary, what might help is thinking of social media usage as a spectrum. Even if you manage to reduce 30 min per day over the next 6 months then that is still a week worth of time saved over the next 1 year. So any progress along the spectrum is good for you.
With that in mind lets see how we can do this.
Wresting back control
- Adding limits to the time spent on social media
You can go to the digital wellbeing section on Android and screentime section in iOS to view how much you are using your phone and specific apps. You can set timers for the apps that you limit. Similarly for the web you can install browser-plugins like Leechblock to limit how much time you spend on specific sites. Once that timer expires the plugin will not allow you to go to that site.
You might relapse after a lot of progress, especially if a stressful event happens in your life. However keep at it. So long as you can see progress over a period of time that is good.
2. Substituting Social Media with hobbies
This stage is as important and has to happen along with stage 1. Once you start setting limits on your social media usage you will start to have moments in your day where you wonder “Oh, my Facebook time is up, Hmm… What do I do now ?”. This moment is crucial, you have to give your brain something to do in that moment. If you don’t, then your brain will trick you with some made up reason to turn off those limits and find a way around them (“Oh but I’m tired from work now, let me just use it for 10 more min”). And once you open it, there go another 2 hours.
So pick something to do in these moments. Ideally it should be
- something you already enjoy doing
- something which does not involve using a “smart” device
- something you can do anywhere and anytime
- and most importantly it should be easy to do
The last one is most important because solving complex math problems on the bus back from work is probably not what your brain wants to do. So it will quickly reject it and go to social media. Ideal substitutes are easy to read books, doing the crossword or a puzzle, maybe listening to podcasts/audio-books, handy-craft project or anything else. You pick, you know yourself best.
Reducing chances of Regression
Breaking social media habits is not easy because they have a few tricks up their sleeve to lure you back. Lets look at those and how you can thwart them.
Using social media only on your browser
Native apps are designed to have a much better user experience so that your mental barrier to watching that “harmless” cat video is lowered. They are designed to manipulate you to keep using them and keep coming back to them. They will send you the exact notification at exactly the right time to grab your attention. These apps also have access to more data like your location, image gallery etc which they can use to further manipulate you. Whereas because the web interface is not that fluid, it makes things like posting, sharing and consuming photos and videos harder. This increased difficulty acts as an automatic barrier to your subconscious from getting distracted. Even if your usage at this point remains the same that is okay. You are making it harder for your subconscious self to get distracted and that is progress.
Turn off Notifications
Notifications are the biggest way that apps grab your attention. They send you nudges to “connect” with someone, promos to bring you back into the den and whatnot. You should seriously consider turning off all notifications for all your apps except 1–2 really important ones. Turn them off from the lock screen as well. You can also unsubscribe to the emails you get from social media apps because they are intended to hook you back with catchy content, especially when you have been away for a while. This way you can use the app when you want it, not when the app wants you to.
Conclusion
Adding limits and substituting social-media with hobbies act as a self reinforcing upwards spiral and the further sections help you stay the course. Thus you reduce social media usage by 10 min and do the crossword instead. After a few weeks you reduce it further by 30 min and then read a chapter in a book. After a year you have a social media free weekend and then go for a hike in the woods. And so on and so forth. Progress might be non-linear, but it’s progress. Eventually you could be free enough and might choose to disconnect from social media entirely.
That’s it for Part One of this series. In Part Two, I talk about the importance of data-privacy in relation to social media and how that helps to de-addict. Do read that too and also let me know what you think in the comments below, give me feedback and help me improve.